


The Hand that Rocks the Cradle

by EffervescentAngel



Series: Lord of the Rings/ The Hobbit One Shots [3]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, Death, Love, Miracles, Mother's Day, Sorrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 20:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14655477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EffervescentAngel/pseuds/EffervescentAngel
Summary: There is no more powerful force in nature than a mother's love for her children, for this is a love that brings miracles.





	The Hand that Rocks the Cradle

Dís knew the moment it happened. Nothing around her had physically changed, yet she felt this as clearly as an arrow piercing her flesh.

 

Her children were slain.

 

She had been refining the delicate pattern in what would become a new set of ceremonial hair beads when an icy feeling wrapped around her heart and squeezed until she was certain she had to be bleeding. She would have sent for a healer, mistaking this agony for a heart attack but for one small detail; the connected ache in her womb. It was an amplified version of the same twisting of the gut that she had felt whenever one of her sons had been about to be injured. She momentarily flashed on some of those times: a tiny hand reaching out towards the glowing stone of a live forge, a little foot slipping from a pony's saddle stirrup, big watering eyes looking up at her, so much fear and pain balanced poignantly with the certainty that _she_ and _she alone_ could alleviate their pain.

 

But this was far more suffering than a burned hand would cause. As mothers often do, Dís felt their pain as if it were her own. Phantoms of agony blossomed along her midsection, her shoulder, fleeting but insistent and cruel. She could hear her heart beating loudly in her ears, causing her to want to shut out the world and numb herself to this unbearable reality, but a voice deep in her spirit told her to listen past the incessant pumping sound. And there, deep in her mind she heard it, too faint to be a physical voice and too clear to not be real.

 

“Help me, Mother!”

 

“I need you!”

 

“Where are you?”

 

The cries began to overlap, but the voices were too known and too dear to her to be completely blended as one. And in the midst of this cacophony one thought overwhelmed all the rest.

 

Her babies needed her.

 

And so Dís, daughter of Thrain son of Thror, sister of Thorin Oakenshield, Princess of Erebor and Lady of the Blue mountains, drew herself up to her full height and wiped her tears with a shaking but strong hand, and tore out of her workshop. She ran deep into the heart of their home, into the most well guarded part of the mountain, the Shrine to Aulë the Smith, Creator of the race of Dwarves. And there, before her God and unable to speak a word, she broke down again and allowed her heart to communicate for her.

 

In a great scream of agony and sorrow, Dís cried as she had never cried in her life, great heaving sobs that powered a river of tears that soaked her dress and darkened the floor in front of her where she had fallen to her knees. Her cries echoed through the mountain and the people who lived outside of it paused in consternation. Yet these were not empty tears, the kind one gives when they are simply in the mood to cry, these were a Mother's tears, shed in a love so overwhelming that scholars and poets from the dawn of time have never been able to properly describe it; a love as fierce as the dragon who had taken their home, as deep as the earth itself and as real as the love that caused Eru to breathe life into the world in the first place.

 

In times past, Eru has not been blind to this love and Dís had to believe that Aulë would not be deaf to her now. Her heart pleaded for things she couldn't reasonably hope for, prostrated itself before her creator in a desperate bid for mercy. Her body was wound so tightly, she began to cry blood as well as tears, as her heartstrings began to fray.

 

In her heart of hearts, she told the Smith of all that was good and true in her children, the pure way they loved, the free and easy way they gave. Their tenacity, their loyalty, their bright smiles and easy forgiveness.

 

A second wave of pain hit, higher and to her side, and she knew that her brother had been taken as well. She could sense them fading and the reality of the last of her family dying so young, too young, deserving far more and better than this sorry end, prompted a single word to rise from the pit of her belly.

 

“Mahal!”

 

It was both a prayer and a surrender, this scream to her God by name. The cry faded from her lips as her strength left her and she fell to her side on the cold stone.

 

She lay as if dead, barely breathing and showing no signs of life but the bloody tears still streaming out of her eyes. Though open, those eyes no longer beheld what was physically in front of her. Instead she saw a very different scene.

 

Fíli and Kíli, their bodies motionless and their eyes sightless, her babies, murdered on a cold mountainside, dead before they had even lived. Thorin, broken and defeated and yet, more at peace than she had seen him in decades. Perhaps he had been victorious after all, regardless of the heavy price paid. The blood of Durin, her family, pouring out onto the unforgiving snow. A small thought occurred to her, as she noticed the way the bodies lay. Kíli had not been bleeding as long. He had died defending, or perhaps avenging his big brother. Even to the end, they stood together. Thorin's lifeless gaze was towards them. Death itself could not tear the bond between Uncle and Nephew.

 

Darkness was taking over. A final desperate thought occurred to her as her vision narrowed further.

 

_Are these not the kind of souls the world needs in it now more than ever?_

 

As the blackness took her, she had a hallucination of mighty Aulë himself, taking up his great bellows and standing over her family, gently blowing new air into their bodies, offering them a new lease on life. Then her strength gave out fully and she slept, both exhausted and unwilling to wake again and face this harsh reality.

 

 

><><><><

 

In a land far to the east, beyond forests and rivers, across mountains and valleys, three Dwarves lay dead on a mountainside, the snow falling peacefully around them.

 

Suddenly, the youngest jerked with a violent intake of breath, soon followed by his older brother. An echoing gasp was heard a ways from them, as their uncle, too, was snatched from the Halls of Mandos.

 

Kíli looked around as his memory slowly came back to him. He was in terrible pain, but that was a small concern compared to the worry that was consuming him, childish though it may have been. He could feel the stone his mother had carved for him, weighing against his chest. It felt warm, as though it had been sitting in the sun. He had promised his mother he would be careful, and he had broken that promise and almost died for it. A single thought consumed him, the same thought he didn't realize was dominating his brother's mind as well.

 

 _M_ _am's goin' to_ _be furious._

 

On a small peak near them, as he gazed down at his injured nephews, Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thrain son of Thror, King under the mountain, fiercest of the Dwarf warriors also had a single thought.

 

_Dís will have my hide for this._

**Author's Note:**

> This work is dedicated to my mom, whose steadfast love has seen me through so much, and also to my honorary grandmother, who I can feel still loving me from Heaven.


End file.
